5 Gaming Crossovers I’d Like to See

Thanks to DeviantArt for providing most of the images for this article. I just had to add “-pony” to every search and things were golden.

Crossover video games are usually a quickly churned-out gimmick intended to capitalize on two separate franchises. Junk food gaming for that quick fix. Occasionally the results are interesting, but there is the potential for so much more. If Disney and Warner Bros. can collaborate for one scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? then some of these might be somewhat remotely conceivable in an alternate universe.

5. Every JRPG ever made: Who is the animest?

Sure, there’ve been dozens of crossovers involving the characters of various JRPGs, but rarely the actual mechanics. So let’s keep the Japanophiles busy arguing and make tons of money on the side. Most differences between JRPGs are number-based or even merely cosmetic, so it wouldn’t be hard to implement thousands of characters from countless franchises. You could recycle art like you’re Capcom in the mid-90s, even out the numbers so you don’t have Disgaea characters dealing millions of damage to Final Fantasy characters with maximum HP values in the quarter digits. There was Namco x Capcom in 2005, but neither of those companies are famous for their JRPGs and the end result was considered mediocre even in Japan. So a new game of that sort would probably have to be centered around Squeenix and their trillions of JRPGs from the past 30 years. Unlike some other stuff on this list, this one wouldn’t be hard to create, nor to market to potential buyers. Yuri from Shadow Hearts versus the kids from Robotrek and Secret of the Stars? Make it so. And no card gimmicks, please.

4. Shmup mashup

Who would win in a fight between a fully powered-up Vic Viper from Gradius and one of the ridiculous bosses from Touhou? Or the sword-wielding ship from Chaos Field versus one of the versatile ships from Einhander? How about one of the anime kids from Bangai-O Spirits firing twenty trillion missiles at once towards a souped-up version of the triangle from Asteroids? Stupid, yes, but it would be a blast to try it out. You could mix and match various games’ gimmicks, like giving the dual-color scheme from Ikaruga on the cluster of ships from Shoot 1Up to fight the Bydo Empire or the colossal internal organs monster that makes up Abadox. You could come up with some moronic interdimensional travel plot to justify all of this and then go nuts with the pew pewing. I’d love it.

3. Real-time strategy smorgasbord

You require additional pylons to build Peewees and Fidos from Total Annihilation. Create an army of samurai from Shogun: Total War and pit them against mechs from Herzog Zwei who are led by Super-Stalin from Command and Conquer: Red Alert, taking out enemies all the way with earthquakes from Populous. RTSes are probably the most complex and nerve-wracking genre of video game there is, requiring a gargantuan amount of various skills as well as planning your armies’ attacks, harvesting the right resources, and predicting (often human) enemy movements. And using the Dark Templars from Starcraft: Brood War, you could potentially control everything. I’m sure within a few weeks the playerbase would discover the most game-breakingly overpowered combination of units and tactics, but RTSes are always evolving and they’d never run out of options to explore.

2. League of Legends vs. Heroes of Newerth vs. DOTA2

The three big MOBA games all thrown together in a blender of blindingly fast craziness, chaotic teamfights, and racial slurs. The possibilities found in the mixture of these games are incredible, especially if you don’t care particularly about balance. You could have a restricted mode where you have teams of 5 from the same game with only that games’ items and whatnot, or mixed teams but with their own games’ items, or go absolutely nuts and allow everything.

DOTA2 characters would be crazy overpowered compared to the others, so they would have to be toned down a bit or the stats of the other two could be buffed. LoL champions have the advantage of using Recall to go back to base while DOTA2 characters have to screw around with their clunky Courier system. But the DOTA2 guys can store more than six items. Then the oft-neglected Heroes of Newerth dudes come in to shake things up. More options equals better in a game of this sort.

I’ve been waiting over ten years for this and it’ll probably never be considered for development. Sure, they’d throw us a bone once in awhile by including a couple of obscure characters from various lesser-known franchises (Arthur from Ghosts ‘n Goblins in Marvel vs Capcom 3, for example), but I want them to go all-out. I don’t want just a little bit of fanservice to remind players that they still vaguely remember people who played arcade games in the 80s. Make it an official MUGEN: a big ridiculous unbalanced slugfest with every character from every 2D fighting game from both companies. It’s not like either of them are hesitant to recycle sprites or make endless sequels.

I want to play a team of characters from The Last Blade, Red Earth, and King of the Monsters. I want to pit Rasputin from World Heroes against Iggy from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. They can throw in the myriad of Capcom side-scrolling beat-em-ups, too. The lizardman from Magic Sword and the cleric from Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom joining forces with the obnoxious Princess Sissy from Power Instinct. I don’t care if it’s thematically appropriate or of the visuals clash horribly, I just want to pit everything against everything.

And what of 3D? There have been all sorts of crossovers featuring 2D fighting games, but until Street Fighter x Tekken, there were no inter-company 3D fighting games that I know off. The closest things we ever got were the Super Smash Bros. series and the mediocre strategy JRPG I talked about in #5. So if Capcom decided there’s no market for sprite-based 2D fighters, why not a 3D fighter crossover? They better get on it because even Tekken’s retarded little sister is joining up with Virtua Fighter to get some of that sweet crossover dollar.

About Lee

Lee Laughead writes stuff about video games. Read his Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mesarphelous even though Twitter sucks.

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